Thomas Lucente: Leftists reach new lows in Hobby Lobby debate

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I am deeply disturbed by the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision handed down last week by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Not, of course, by the decision itself, which was spot on.

No, what disturbs me is how far leftists will go to defend what is essentially an indefensible and, dare I say it, profoundly ignorant and anti-American position.

Even more disturbing is that four Supreme Court justices essentially ignored their duty as jurists to “faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon” them and violated their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

This case should have been decided unanimously, just as the court did in the 2006 case of Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal. There, the court decided that members of the Brazilian church União do Vegetal should be allowed to drink their sacramental tea, which contains contains dimethyltryptamine, a Schedule I substance.

Unfortunately, the Hobby Lobby case interfered with the leftist dream of wealth distribution, i.e., having the rich subsidize the sex life of employees.

But the leftist arguments are nonsense. Their arguments lack any kind of substance or grounding in reality.

In order to believe the leftist argument that it is OK to force one person to subsidize the sex life of another, one would have to believe the silly notion that cost-free birth control is somehow a human right.

To make the argument even more silly, of the 20 methods of birth control mandated by federal rules, this case was only about the four that many Christians find morally equivalent to abortion. Four. That leaves 16 methods of birth control still available for subsidization.

From a legal standpoint, the ruling was the only one that could be made. The bipartisan Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed almost unanimously in 1996 and happily signed into law by Bill Clinton, prohibits the government from “substantially burden[ing] a person's exercise of religion” unless it is the “least restrictive means” of furthering a “compelling governmental interest.” That is known as the “strict scrutiny” test.

Unfortunately, in Barack Obama's America, the rule of law is irrelevant when it stands in the way of getting something for free — and by free I mean at the expense of the successful and wealthy.

That is why we are seeing extremely silly arguments by leftists trying to analogize things that are in no way analogous.

One analogical claim I heard many times tries to compare Hobby Lobby to a business owner imposing sharia on its employees.

Seriously. Some leftists are comparing the idea of forcing people to live under sharia with the idea that an employee can't get four methods of birth control at no cost. Trust me, there is no moral equivalence between a company refusing to pay for certain birth control methods and a legal system that stones the victims of rape. If you made that argument, you should be ashamed of yourself.

The fact is that Hobby Lobby, which by most accounts is one of the nation's best employers, is not forcing anyone to do anything. If an employee does not like the compensation package offered, of which insurance is just a part, that person can choose to work elsewhere.

Using the logic of the left, a better analogy would be a person claiming his or her rights were being violated because the company would not provide a free car. There is no difference.

The real problem, though, is not the birth control; it is the unjust mandate. As I have often pointed out in this space, the larger and more powerful government gets, the more these problems arise. Most of these disputes would not exist in a free society with the limited government mandated by our Constitution.

Here is where the left and the right are both wrong. Live and let live. Stop using the force of law to compel people to do things they don't want to do or to stop doing things they want to do. So long as their behavior does not interfere with another person's ability to live free, it is not a governmental concern.

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